Reviews

Critics Say – “8:Mormon Proposition” – Movie

There’s nothing subtle in 8: The Mormon Proposition, a short polemic about the involvement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which, in 2008, overturned a state supreme court ruling giving same-sex couples a constitutional right to marry. Filmmaker Reed Cowan (himself gay and raised Mormon) documents the church’s considerable financial influence on Prop 8’s passage. Then he expands his sad and furious homegrown film to record the misery of gay Mormons sometimes driven to suicide over being rejected by their church and families. – EW.com

The film’s powerful correlative lesson? That citizen journalism will play an important role in outing big-money political players who would like to silently put their stamp on laws from the capitalistic safety of the shadows.

There are many more scenes like these that form the movie’s emotional core, particularly when the film gets to the high suicide and homelessness rate among gay youths from Mormon households. Many are kicked out of their homes, living in absolute hopelessness on the streets; those that stay at home are ostracized within their own families, or forced to go to therapy for a “cure”. The filmmakers line up one person after another who attempted suicide, each telling a different version of the same sad story. – Ian Buckwalter

Proposition, its success was due to funding and support from the Mormon Church. The documentary attempts to show how the church quietly rallied its members around this cause for what was initially an unpopular provision, and boasts an impressive level of research and relatively slick approach. – Sean Gandert

The thing the film does best is to put a human face on the issue, to show us individuals (and couples) who were directly affected by the passing of Prop 8. – Mike McGranaghan

The church wouldn’t respond to requests to air its side of the story (a spokeswoman turns down the opportunity in a call that is not as dramatic as Cowan and Greenstreet evidently believe it to be), so it’s not as if a real debate is going to take place anyway. – Bill Goodykontz